By Mahek Khetani|Staff Writer
Senior Thomas Rose walked into work expecting nothing more than a few customers ordering unhealthy amounts of Mexican food. But just like Thomas, we always assume the least from our day at work then end up with drunk, elderly or famous customers that make for a great story.
“We had this one time where these New Yorkers walked in. At first they’re all chill, then you know at Taco Cabana we serve alcohol. So they got a few margaritas in them, and they just started running amok around the store. Eventually, they get so drunk to the point where my manager actually throws them out of the store, and as they’re leaving, they start mooning the store and just flipping us off and cursing at us, and it was just a big mess,” Rose said.
After only dealing with beans and burritos for four months, that was definitely a memorable experience for Rose although not nearly as bragworthy as one of America’s favorite country singers ordering eighty one dollars worth of brisket at Bill Miller’s.
“So he drives up and he’s in this huge F 350… and I was like ‘that’s gonna be $81, and he hands me a credit card and I swipe it… and he signs it and it comes back like a super swirly signature, and it says George Strait. I was like there is no way. So I look at his card, and it’s this black American Express card, and it has no limit on it. It was George Strait with his middle initial,” senior Bradley Jensen said.
Jensen, of course, did what any proper starstruck teenager would do and calmly asked the Grammy award winner for his autograph.
“When I gave it back I was like ‘Can I get your autograph?’ and he said, ‘Son, this is my day off, like really? I just want my food’… so I gave him his brisket…”
And of course, it is hard to be keep a straight face when people are making unpleasant requests. This is something senior Jack McFarland can relate to when he was working at Magnificent Candle Shop.
“A lot of people come in with their stuffed pets and want us to make candles shaped like them because we have the ability to carve the candles so it’s more like wax statues…and it’s not like we’re gonna deny them. It was weird. There were really freaky people, like cat people, the ones that have like 50 cats and they’re never gonna get married,” McFarland said.
And then there are the incidents that you can’t forget soon enough.
“This woman was eating her food and bit down on her fork, and her dentures came out with it, and she threw them on the floor and everything… and I had to pick them up …and I had to wash them. Then I asked the caregivers if they could put them back in her mouth, but they were busy, so I had to do it,” senior Hailey Alvey said.
To make things worse, Alvey added that her patient wasn’t cooperating with her attempts to insert the dentures back in her mouth causing Alvey more frustration since her job is only to serve food.
“She wouldn’t open her mouth, so I had to do it for her and like, I like shoved the teeth in there, and I was like ‘Ok, you’re gonna put them in there, right?’ and I put them in. I let go, and then she like spit them back out, and then she put them in backwards, and I was like ‘okay that’s not how you do it’. So I had to take them out, and I had to literally put my hand in her mouth and push up so the dentures would click in her mouth.”
